»Futuring Machines. Practice-based exploration of AI as algorithmic irritation in the context of participatory futures«
Future-oriented, resilient societies require a critical engagement with possible futures. Using an interdisciplinary, practice-based approach, the project Futuring Machines investigates the potential of Human-AI interactions as disruptive thought-provoking impulses to facilitate critical reflection on future scenarios and foster perspective change through the writing of fictions and imaginary stories. To this end, the interdisciplinary team aims to iteratively optimize a large language model and develop an AI-supported writing tool that will be deployed in participatory workshops with diverse actors.
The 1-year project is funded by the Fellowship Forschungswerkstatt of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and started on 1.1.2024.
Project team:
Jordi Tost, M.A. — PhD student Faculty Art & Design, associated with HCI group, Fac. of Media
Dr. Johannes Kiesel — PostDoc Professorship Intelligent Information Systems, Fac. of Media
Mattis Kuhn, Dipl. Des. — Artistic Staff, Professorship Cross-media Moving Image, Fac. of Art & Design
Prof. Dr. Eva Hornecker — Professor of HCI, Fac. of Media
Marcel Gohsen, M.Sc. — Research Assistant Professorship Intelligent Information Systems, Fac. of Media
Maximilian Heinrich, M.A. — Research Assistant Professorship Intelligent Information Systems, Fac. of Media
External members:
Britta Schulte (PhD) — Research Assistant Anhalt Univ. of Applied Sciences
Fidel Thomet, M.A. — Research Assistant Urban Complexity Lab, Potsdam Univ. of Applied Sciences
Futuring Machines events + publications
How will we live in 50 years? The >Futuring Machines< project has been busy developing the user interface and different modes of co-writing. It now runs a set of workshops where participants will be cowriting speculative fiction with AI. We'll imagine future scenarios, reflect on possibilities, fears and hopes, and put this all into short stories, supported by the AI-based co-writing tool that developed by the team. With this, we simultaneously explore futuring writing and the potential of the AI tool developed.
During Summer Semester 2024, 2 student projects collaborated with the project - Matthis Kuhn ran a project »Futuring Machines. Co-Writing Fictions With Generative AI« at the Faculty of Arts&Design, with results of futuring stories exhibited at Summaery 2024, and Johannes Kiesel + team ran a project at the Dept. of Informatics »Futuring Machines. Developing an AI-Bot for Fiction Co-Writing« (also shown at Summaery 2024). While the artistic project acted as beta-testers exploring the new tool, the informatics project contributed to the tech development.
The first public workshop »Zukünfte schreiben mit KI« / »AI Prophéties« took place during the 'Night of Writing' on 13th June at the University Library of BUW (Session 1: 19:15 bis 20:45; Session 2: 21:30 bis 23:00) in the PC-Pool of the Library.
The second workshop »Queer Futures schreiben mit KI« took place during the Campus Pride Week on 18th June (Session 1 — 14:00 bis 16:00 ; Session 2 — 17:00 bis 19:00) SCC PC-Pool 2.
The 3d workshop took place on Dec. 2nd in the town of Herzberg with members of the local community, cowriting about 'futures for Herzberg'
We also ran a joint workshop on »AI as a Citizen: Eliciting Smart City Future Stories through Human-AI Collaborative Fiction Writing« at the Academic Mindtrek conference in Tampere, Finland on October 8th, which utilized the final cowriting tool. This involved more members of the HCI lab as well as external organisers interested in futuring writing and future cities.
J. Tost, M. Gohsen, B.F. Schulte, F. Thomet, M. Kuhn, J. Kiesel, B. Stein, E. Hornecker. Futuring Machines: An Interactive Tool for Participative Futuring Through Human-AI Collaborative Speculative Fiction Writing. (demo) Proc. Conversational User Interfaces (CUI '24). ACM, Article 42, 1–7. doi.org/10.1145/3640794.3665904 (author version pdf)